


DSL

by orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Finn's Death Meta, Goes AU After 5x20 The Untitled Rachel Berry Project, Klaine Break-Up, Klaine Friendly, M/M, New York, Sam Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-28 13:08:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13904664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: With some convincing from Blaine, Sam decides to stay in New York to model.  When Kurt calls off the wedding, Blaine toughs it out through the rest of his year at NYADA. Blaine crashes on Sam’s couch. Sam plays liaison between Blaine and Kurt. His love for both of them grows.





	DSL

**Author's Note:**

> Hi y'all. I have been on unofficial hiatus from writing Glee fic for a minute, but I am back with the following nonsense x)
> 
> The more I re-watch this show, the more I fall in love with Blam. And Sam. The Kurt/Sam grows too. As you know if you've read the other fic in this series (which I hope to have an update for soon btw!), I have many qualms with Glee's last season. It deserves all the re-writes and fix-its. All of them. One of my biggest problems is that I don't believe everyone would've fled New York so quickly.
> 
> In this, three people stay. In this, Sam is bi. In this, I explore what the aftermath of Kurt and Blaine's break up could've been.
> 
> Scene one takes place shortly after the events of "The Untitled Rachel Berry Project," and a Kurt/Elliott partner fic in the same AU is in the works. Let me know what you think xo

When Sam tells everyone he’s moving back to Lima, Blaine decides he isn’t going to let his best friend off the hook so easy. He questions Sam’s motives as two of them pack up the rest of their things in Mercedes’ brownstone.

 

“You _just_ got that spread on the bus,” Blaine is saying, taking down the Polaroids Sam and Artie shot from his corkboard, “you look fantastic, better than you ever have, and that woman you shot with, while wildly inappropriate, probably knows a lot of important people in the business. I don’t know, it just seems like you have a lot of momentum right now. It makes me sad to think you’re going to leave that.”

 

“I know,” Sam is saying, folding several of Blaine’s sweaters into lopsided stacks, “I know but if I stay here, and I let the lights and the cameras and the women and the—” Sam glances over his shoulder, Mercedes-check, then lowers his voice, “—and the drugs, if I let that kind of stuff into my life, I’m not gonna wanna stop. And I won’t have the stability and the boring-ness of type-A’s like Rachel and Mercedes and, well, _you_ to keep me on that horse.”

 

“Kurt and I aren’t going anywhere.”

 

Sam smiles. “You guys are gonna be married. Trust me, it’s gonna be different.”

 

On that note, Blaine quiets. He can’t act like things aren’t already different, with him moving back into the loft so soon. Even though Kurt invited him back, insisted he come back, Blaine knows that Kurt doesn't actually want him there yet. Objectively, Blaine can't blame him; he knows they still need time, understands the merits of living apart. Subjectively, though? It aches. Not being with Kurt makes Blaine wonder, if one of these days Kurt will wake up and remember just how badly Blaine fucked up before. 

 

“So to curb your non-existent and very unlikely drug addiction,” Blaine says to Sam, “you’re going to banish yourself back to the land of strip malls and cow fields?”

 

“Well, yeah. The cows are comforting, I kinda miss their sweet, dopey faces and their shit smell in the air. Is that weird?”

 

“Yeah, man, that’s kind of weird.”

 

“I don’t care. I’m going back to them.”

 

Blaine ponders Sam now; his guitar-string-calloused fingers fumbling with fabric, the way he gnaws at the curve of his lower lip. As much as Blaine wishes Sam would stay, as much as he's needed the comfort of seeing another familiar Lima face, he gets that Sam hasn’t had it easy in New York. Blaine has always lived a cushy life, even if it was just in a suburb of Mideastern Ohio. His parents may not be his biggest supporters re: his career and his love life, they would never not send the $1000 they do every month, never not pay his tuition credit card statement with lofty bills from date nights.

 

Blaine doesn't know what he would do if he were Sam, who at twenty is entirely self-sufficient, who has to make all of his own money and starts back at zero on the first of every month. Blaine can't blame him for wanting to leave, but Blaine also knows that Sam self-sabatoges when things feel like they're going too well. Residual effect of being homeless, Sam says: you're so used to everything going wrong that, when you get a good thing, you think it's a bad thing in a disguise.

 

“Listen,” Blaine says now, “I get it. It’s rough, being here, and I know this place has never really felt like home. But just think of me, and Kurt, as home away from home for you. Let me be the dopey, comforting, metaphorical cow in your life.”

 

“Dude, you’re not fat.”

 

“What? No, I know, I mean, I still think I could lose weight, Kurt’s been looking really, _really_ good lately—“

 

“Blaine.”

 

“Right, not the point. My point is, it may be hard for you to see it about yourself, but I’ve watched you grow so much since you’ve been here. It was really mature of you and Mercedes to go forward like you did, and then come to the conclusions that you did. But just because things aren’t going to work out with her, you don’t have to give up on what you've started here. Give it another, I don’t know, another year. If you aren’t basking in the light of supermodel fame by then, fine. You have my permission to flee.”

 

Sam grins and picks up a box of Blaine's clothes, passing him on his way out of the room.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says, low, borderline flirtatious, “I didn’t realize I needed your _permission_ to do anything.”

 

Blaine's stomach does a flip, residual effect of having (impossible, unreturned) feelings for the guy once upon a time.

 

“Oh, did you not know?” Blaine calls after Sam’s back. “I am totally in control of your fate. Have been ever since we met. Haven’t you always wondered why you can never find socks that match? That’s me.”

 

“Damn it, Blaine, you know how much I love those knee socks with the toe divisions. It feels so janky when I just wear one sock with toe divisions!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so, Sam stays. Luckily the woman from the Treasure Trailz shoot did take a liking to him, and not just sexually. The same day that Sam and Blaine reluctantly filed into Kurt loft—Sam feels shitty taking any more from Kurt than he has to, his dad let Sam live with them for almost two years, surely the Hummel hospitality runs out someday—Sam is contacted by one Ms. Bichette, a contact of Ms. Treasure Trailz. Finally, the flattering two year contract with her House that seemed impossible last year, is here before him. Sam can leave Kurt’s and get his own place with his sign-on check in a week.

 

The studio apartment is a shoebox, deathly cold, and still in Buschwick, but it’s his. Sam is giddy with pride as he christens the bachelor pad with two large pizzas, just for him, a handle of whiskey, and drunken renditions of country songs. He also calls his mom and dad to thank them; talking to them about what they’ve been through never fails to make him weepy-drunk.

 

“I’m scared, Mom,” he tells her honestly, wiping the snot from his nose onto his new _designer_ jeans. “I live alone in one of the biggest cities in the world, and people wanna pay me for my art, and I always thought it was dumb to be a dreamer after seeing what happened to you and Dad. But I'm here.”

 

He suddenly feels the need to tell her, about the one thing in his life he’s never wanted to be honest with her about. Maybe it’s the whiskey, or maybe it’s the fact that she's hundreds of miles away, that makes him feel safe enough.

 

“I couldn’t’ve gotten here if I hadn’t done some, uh, pretty shifty things when I was in Kentucky. Remember how I told you and Dad that I was the youngest ever manager at the Dairy Queen? I wasn’t. I was dancing for cash at Stallionz, keeping the stacks under my mattress and hoping they didn’t smell too much like old ladies’ perfume and bacon grease from the buffet when I gave it to you.”

 

“Oh, honey.” His mother’s laughter is loud, musical. She's not mad at him. “I can’t say I don’t want to drive there and burn the place down for knowingly hiring an innocent minor. But it’s alright. It is now. I’m just so sorry that you felt like you had to work so hard, doing things beyond your years. To help us.”

 

“No, Mom, I’d do it again. I mean, not the stripping. I just mean I’d do anything for you and Dad and Stevie and Stacy. Anything. I promise.”

 

“Right now, I want you stop worrying about me and your father. Alright? Right now, this incredible thing that you’ve accomplished? It’s about you. So go, baby, go and take it. You’ve toiled and sweat and for this. It’s yours.”

  

As he drifts off to sleep that night, atop a stack of quilts he borrowed from Kurt some time ago, he dreams in-and-out of the lowest of the low of his Stallionz nights.

 

The night before Finn and Rachel walked into that bar and rescued him from his depths, some of his fellow strippers invited him out with some of the girls who worked at Ingenues. Sam knew he should deny their invitation, heard the locker room talk about what went down at outings, but he was already drinking that night, and he was so lonely, so tired of being the weird kid with torn clothes, from the school on the wrong side of the tracks. Because he was strong, because he could dance, these guys liked him; they were all older than him, independent; many were high school dropouts. But they said they were making way more than their friends who were still in college. 

 

So Sam went out with them, wanting to be taken under the wing. He drank too much, and when he's drunk, he's easily suggestible. Women wanted him to do lines of coke off their bodies; he wasn't sure about the coke, but he was very damn sure about the bodies. The drug's high woke him up, he felt like he could go the night without sleeping and then some; so this was why people did it, he got it. He could work so much better with this stuff.

 

At the end of the night, Sam saw that someone had left a bag of it laying around on the kitchen counter. He stole it on the way. Back in the bedroom where he slept with his brother and sister, he stared at the drug in bed. His head was spinning, acrid taste in the back of his mouth. Part of him wanted nothing but to feel this numb for good, or at least until all of his parents’ debt was paid. Until the pain of loss was gone. It was so unfair that this happened to them. That's why needed to be like the guys who made good money; get more pumped, take steroids, maybe order one of those penis pumps they sold on TV at three in the morning. He could stay up all night, work later shifts, sell his talents.

 

He couldn’t bring himself to do another line in the same room with Stevie and Stacy. Sam held it in his hands, riding out the wiry energy coursing through his body, thinking about his once-amazing life in Lima, how he missed it, watching the sun come up through the window until finally, he fell asleep with the bag of coke still curled in his hands.

 

Stacy woke up him an hour later, poking him in the cheek and staring down at the pouch. “What’s that, Sammy?”

 

He vowed to throw it away. All day at school, he thought about it stuffed into his pillowcase. When he got back to the club that afternoon, right after school, the guys re-extended their invitation. He might’ve taken it—and someone might've wised up that he'd stolen their drugs and beat him, he reckoned—had Rachel not stood with that outstretched dollar bill before him on stage. Knowing Finn and Rachel were a sign, he packed a bag and drove to Lima, never looked back.

 

Here in New York, the months pass fast, and the House of Bichette keeps Sam busier than he's ever been, but he loves it. He's inspired every single day, learns that this trade is about more than being sexy. He’s told by a photographer he works with one night, "I can see your pain in the way you hold yourself. Your body. Hold that pose, strong, like you've got weight of the world on your back and you can take it. Beautiful." When the stills come out later, he's almost surprised to see himself in them; surprised at how much older he looks, at how well it's all worked out.

 

His work schedule keeps him busy enough to not be in want of a social life that much: early meetings at seven, ad shoots at noon, fittings at three, walkthroughs at five, shows from seven until the late hours of the night. But he doesn’t feel like ninety five percent of the people he’s meeting at this job are really his friends. When it comes down to it, for all that he's wearing the clothes and walking the walk, he still feels too young and well, too backwoods to relate to everyone's proper New York/European upbringings.

 

Sometimes, he goes out to the club with some other models--finding it much easier now to turn down drugs, thankfully--but more than anything, while he's with them, he wants back the comfort of Monday night potlucks with his family. Rachel is gone for her pilot; Artie has fallen off the map engrossed in school, when he’s not traveling for some big festival, anyway; Brittany and Santana moved back home; and Mercedes—well, Sam wants to reach out to her so badly. He misses her room-filling laughter, the way that he’d get chills every time he heard her sing. He also knows that they needed a break, that they were just going to keep cycling, that his needs, hers, and the stars were not aligned.

 

And then there's Kurt and Blaine, who this year have fallen back into the small, dysfunctional dance they do whenever they share a space. Sam tried to ignore it the weeks he lived on their couch, their civil disagreements that would turn into bickering, and then yelling, and then silence would fall, and then, telltale, the faint sounds of their mattress squeaking, Blaine whimpering. But it was hard to ignore when Kurt and Blaine were two of the closest people in Sam's life. Two of the people he loved most.

 

When he had nothing, Blaine and Kurt gave him everything. He wishes he could do the same. But he feels like can't get in between them, like something stark has changed about Kurt especially ever since Blaine cheated. All of their friends can tell. As much as Kurt has let Blaine back in, things will never be the same as they were before. And maybe that's for the better.

 

Sam remembers the way Kurt loved him before; when he lived with Kurt and Finn, when their lives were all completely weaved, and Kurt was the most devoted, most romantic person Sam had ever seen in action (and he probably still is, deep down). Sam loved the way Kurt got whenever Blaine was at the house, all warm, charming hostess, cooking for everyone and telling them all excitedly at dinner about whatever latest music project Blaine had in the works. K and B made each other ridiculously happy; always joking around, truly best friends and lovers. And Sam wasn't sure how he felt about Blaine for a long time, but more and more, the guy grew on him, too. There was something similar about the both of them that Sam found infections--they were smart and sharp, both knew about the same obscure things about fashion and art and music and never failed to school Sam on what he needed to know to be cultured, stern but loving. Their wits and dry, sarcastic senses of humor matched well with his own, too.

 

Some nights these days, Sam texts their three-person group chat to invite them to the little homey bachelor pad he’s made for himself, not ten minutes away from the loft. But almost always, they decline. Blaine texts Sam out of their group chat to tell him the real reason they don’t want to come.

  

 _Sorry,_ he says, _We've been fighting about the antique lamp thing again. Don’t wanna bring anyone into our spiral._

 

But when Sam asks if Blaine wants to stay over a couple nights, to get some space, Blaine still declines.

 

_I’m afraid that if he doesn’t see me enough, or if I leave his mind for too long, he’ll get doubts. Is that stupid?_

 

Sam doesn’t say it is. He also doesn’t say how much he misses seeing Blaine like he did last year, because he doesn’t want to guilt trip him, or make him feel like he’s abandoning his relationship while its in strife. But Sam does miss him so, like when he walks into the house after a long night and still half expects Blaine to be there, cooking or cleaning. He misses all of Blaine’s various smiles, the one’s he’s memorized, like the one he gets when he knows he’s right about something, but still play-argues with Sam for the hell of it, to humor him. Or the one that reaches up to his eyes, all sparkling and Disney prince and shit, that makes Sam understand why Kurt must be so in love with him.

 

Or those quiet, pondering ones, when he’s paused from reading a book and is staring blankly, blissed out, into space, that used to make Sam poke him in his slightly chubby gut, ask him what he’s getting so doe-eyed about now. Sam wouldn’t have survived the first cold nights in this city, when every agency he went to told him he was a joke, if it hadn’t been for Blaine’s consistency. That consistency got the both of them through what had the potential to be the worst year of their lives.

 

Now, it's April of Kurt's junior year and Blaine's sophomore year, and Sam is so worried about he little he hears from them, he thinks they might be gone. One rainy Friday night, Sam is home alone, bored, and he’s just about to order some Chinese food and probably jack off to some cowgirl porn, when he hears loud, incessant pounding on his front door.

 

His pulse skips. The echoing of the pounds reminds him just how alone he is right now. He eyes the bat he keeps near the door, just in case, but he only finds Blaine standing out there in the night: soaked from the rain, hair slick around his face, wearing nothing but a blue terry bathrobe that clings to him. He's crying.

 

“Oh," Sam says.

 

Blaine doesn’t have to say it. He’s holding the engagement ring in his hand.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Sam pulls Blaine into an embrace, lets his best friend fall apart against his chest.

 

 

  

 

 

 

Blaine watches the relationship fall apart. He knows that Kurt tries, best he can, to be as emotionally available as Blaine needs, but Blaine also knows the truth about his own needs: they're too much for just one person. Blaine knows that his need to be reassured constantly, to see Kurt as often as physically possible, to always get Kurt’s thoughts before moving forward, are exhausting his dear loved one. He’s a speeding, rickety train, has been ever since Kurt accepted him back. He can see where the tracks stop off, knows what’s coming, but losing Kurt again terrifies him too much to stop. 

 

 _Maybe we’ll make it,_ he tells himself. _Maybe we’ll learn to fly when the track runs out._

 

But Kurt’s NYADA classwork and professional life become increasingly stressful as he graduates from under to upper classman. Since Adam’s leave, he’s taken over presidential duties for the Apples, he’s been hand-picked for a special student committee that plans Tibideux’s showcases, and he’s co-directing a show with one of the most elite groups of senior playwrights in the academy, who’ve chosen him especially. Kurt says his intellectual energy is just drained throughout the day.

 

“It’s not that I’m tired of _you_ ,” he says every night, when Blaine can't help but express that Kurt's pushing him away, “it’s just that I’m tired of everything lately. I'm sorry.”

 

Blaine knows that, he knows. But he can’t stop how it makes him feel. The stakes of NYADA and the stakes of this marriage make Blaine feel like he’s coming unraveled, and it's driving Kurt crazy in the bad ways more than the good. Those nights that they fight bitterly and make up, sweating it out, Kurt driving and Blaine lying underneath him, taking it, Blaine feels sometimes like he might die, without this love.

  

Like it’s unhealthy to need someone this much.

 

Hours after what would be their last New York dinner date, the night that Kurt ends their engagement in the rain, Blaine stands outside of Kurt's giant loft doors soaked, feeling the same way he did that fated night two years ago; the night he had to face the worst decision he's ever made, hold Kurt's heart in his hand and willingly crush it into pulp.

 

When he walks in now, and finds Kurt on the sofa turning the ring around on his finger, Blaine realizes suddenly that this isn't home anymore. 

 

What is he going to do?

 

“What are we gonna do?” Blaine almost doesn't mean to say it, but he can't help himself. “I live here.”

 

Kurt sighs, then encourages Blaine to take a shower and get into warm clothes before they talk about this further. Blaine silently, begrudgingly agrees, comes out wearing his terrycloth robe, doesn't bother gelling his hair.

 

He sits in the armchair across from the coffee table instead of on the couch next to Kurt, trying not to look at his ex-best friend and ex-fiance’s gorgeous face. Instead, he stares at the steaming red mug of hot chocolate sitting on the table between them. A peace offering.

 

“I made that for you,” Kurt offers.

 

Blaine feels a spike of anger. “Let’s just keep this professional, okay?”

 

Kurt feels a stab of hurt at this, Blaine can see it all over his face. _Just_ take _the hot chocolate,_ he can almost hear Kurt snapping, _don’t be like this. Don’t act like you didn’t see this coming too._

 

“I don’t want you to have to go,” Kurt says instead, composed, regaining himself. “I didn’t expect this to happen so soon, so it’s not like I expect us to separate financially already. It wouldn’t be fair to you. So, you can have all the time you need to stay here, find a new place, get settled somewhere else. I’ll try as much as I can to stay out of your way.”

 

Blaine laughs without a shred of humor. “How are you so calm about this? You say you ‘didn’t expect this to happen,’ but here you are with these mapped out plans, so elegant divorcée.”

 

"Blaine.”

 

“No, Kurt. No.” He stands up, defiance in his next words. “I don’t _want_ to be here.”

 

Kurt face twists in horror as Blaine stands up to march towards the front door.

 

“Please don’t,” Kurt begs, his voice suddenly shaking too, and god, it hurts Blaine so fucking good and so fucking bad to hear Kurt going all ragged. “D-don’t go tonight, not like this when you’re upset, i-it’s still pouring outside, I don’t want anyone to hurt you, _where_ are you going?”

 

“Believe it or not,” Blaine says in the doorway, “I do have a life outside you. People who would _line up_ to help me.”

 

Blaine knows that it was stupid, the whole thing, what he’d said and him walking out barefoot into the rain at half past midnight. But now, stepping on rough, glass-pricked pavement, he burns so horribly with his shame, so sure that he’s just thrown what was left of his life away.

 

Maybe, tonight, he wants someone to hurt him.

 

 _I can’t keep doing this,_ he tells himself, making his way towards the only other home he has to go. _I can’t let someone else define my will to live. Who am I anymore?_  

 

 

 

 

 

 

It goes without saying that Blaine will be crashing on Sam’s couch indefinitely. Sam initially offers Blaine his bed, but Blaine says he feels too pitiful to take it. Sam wonders if it isn’t something more, if maybe the tension of sleeping in a bed with another guy may just be too much for him right now. But maybe Sam’s just projecting; not that its weird for two guy friends to sleep next to each other, objectively. He insists.

  

But it does make heat pool low in his stomach, thinking about Blaine curled up next to him. He tries not to think about it. It's been a passing thought for years, as lying next to each other in positions that flirted with cuddling used to happen sometimes on accident. Sam would stay over at Blaine's in high school, wanting to give Burt and Carole a break, and they'd pass out on the floor with a tangled limb or two, infomercials still buzzing on above their heads. Or in the brownstone, last year, when Sam would get kicked out of Mercedes' room—too handsy—he'd go back into his and Blaine's room, hard and irritable. Blaine would obviously be trying not to laugh. "You can sleep with me," Blaine would tease, and at most, Sam would curl up at the end of Blaine's bed, complain of blue balls and heartbreak 'til he conked.

 

Tonight, the pair says hardly a thing to each other as Blaine undoes his terry robe, changing into a pair Sam’s pajamas in the corner, his back turned. Sam knows he shouldn’t watch, but he does, the quick flash of Blaine’s legs and ass that he gets as he slides the cotton pants over. Sam takes a long swig of his whisky, grateful for the burn that kills the butterflies in his stomach, and offers Blaine the rest. Blaine takes two shots before mumbling a few choppy details about what happened, then passing out from exhaustion.

 

Sam notices Blaine didn’t bring a thing of his own from the loft, so he decides to take executive action. He texts Kurt from Blaine’s phone, letting him know where he is and that he'll get some things later.

 

Kurt thanks him.

 

The next week is less rough, Blaine doesn’t cry so much anymore, at least not in front of Sam, but he comes out of the shower every morning with red eyes. Comes home from classes with them too; NYADA is hard, unbearably so, says Blaine, with Kurt in six of eight of all his classes.

 

Blaine also can’t will himself back to the loft in person, so he sends Sam in his steed. When Sam enters one afternoon, just after a photoshoot, Kurt has company, clearly a cohort from NYADA he’s working on a project with. Kurt stalls when he sees Sam, gives an uncertain “Hey,” then turns his back to continue the project.

 

Sam moves in silence about Kurt’s group, picking out what things he recognizes as Blaine’s in Kurt’s bedroom partition, the living room, the bathroom. Kurt’s already done some of the work of separating Blaine’s belongings from his, haphazard in cardboard boxes and plastic drawers, but it's obvious that each aspect of the organization is unfinished. Sam knows, can see Kurt standing here alone sorting through this all, starting and stopping and questioning and wondering.

 

As he moves in and out of Kurt’s curtain, stacking the things he’s going to take in the Uber by the front door, he watches Kurt interact with his classmates; watches and feels intimidated, by how put-together and adult and kind of steely-distant-gorgeous Kurt has seemed the last two years. Sam hasn’t wanted to admit it, and he knows Kurt hasn’t either, but after the first time Kurt and Blaine broke up, Sam and Kurt's once strong friendship sort of fell to the wayside. Even as Sam was basically living on top of them last year, Kurt was really only his friend by proxy. Not once did they choose to hang out alone together in New York at any point, not even when Rachel and Artie and Mercedes and Santana and everyone was going on solo friend dates with each other. Sam felt too scared to ask Kurt, somehow. There was something unspoken, this distance they couldn’t breach, this colorlessness in Kurt’s eyes whenever the older boy looked upon Sam.

 

Sam wishes he could end this distance now; say he’s sorry to Kurt, for what, he's not exactly sure. Maybe for making it seem like he was on Blaine’s side the first time; he wasn't, it was just that Blaine was so close, physically. As he heads towards the door with the last of Blaine’s things, he makes it a point to give Kurt a sympathetic look. But Kurt gives him a warning look in response:

 

_Not here, not right now. I have work to do. I’m sorry._

 

Later that night, with Blaine’s things in Sam’s studio, the two of them eat cronuts and marathon Overwatch.

 

“I just feel like he doesn’t care,” Blaine is saying, “I see him at school, we don’t talk, and he goes about his day still looking all—devastating, fucking composed and fucking perfect. He’s still wearing his ring, like—how am I supposed to concentrate on moving on or _anything_ if he won’t take it off? I don’t wanna ask for it back.”

 

“I don’t know,” Sam says, “maybe he regrets it. You think you’ll take'm back if he does?"

 

“No. I don't know.” Blaine sighs, tears brimming his eyes. “I mean, no, no. I can’t.”

 

Still later on that night, they’re drunk. This has been happening pretty much every night lately. Sam knows it’s not the healthiest way to cope, not long term, but in the short term, booze can take the sting off of unchangeable trauma. Blaine’s a total lightweight, anyway, a loveable drunk. Sam can’t help but want to see the way his face colors after he’s had a few shots.

 

The way he starts smiling again, loose and silly, wanting to joke and make light of every little thing. Even if it’s only for a few hours, before he remembers, Blaine just wants to feel normal again. Sam wants to let him.

 

Right now, they’re pretty tangled on the couch; for all that Sam will deny it when he’s sober, he’s a cuddly drunk. Blaine feels lightheaded and hot, his thighs in Sam’s lap, and he would call their position intimate if it wasn’t _Sam._  They’re talking about strippers and sex, for God’s sake. But Blaine's long learned not to read.

 

“Y’know sometimes stuff at that club I worked at in high school got kinda shady,” Sam is saying. “They let women come in and buy us out for sex parties and pornos and stuff.”

 

“Wait, are you serious? So you—” Blaine bites his lip. “I mean, did you?”

 

“No. What? No! I was sixteen, that would’ve been like, a million different kinds of illegal. I mean, one time this lady wanted to pay to give me a blow job, so I let her mouth me over the briefs. But it got—yeah, she did that—it got pretty crazy in there sometimes. One night these guys came in and offered me eight hundred dollars—eight _hundred_ dollars—just to give let this one guy rim me for like, twenty minutes. Do you know how long I would’ve had to work at DQ to make eight hundred dollars?”

 

“Jesus.” Blaine has to work to put that image out of his head. Did Sam even know what a rim job was? “I thought only sweet old ladies went to that place.”

 

“Oh, no, there were definitely some characters. This posse of old gay guys came in and rolled deep every Sunday after Scandals or church or something. They were cool. I got to talking with ‘m one night and one guy just gave me these box tickets for the Broncos, ‘cause he had season passes and I told him about how I was trying to impress my siblings and everything.”

 

Sam chuckles, then, rolls his eyes. “Those guys used to call me...” He pauses for effect. “DSL.”

 

“D. S. L.” Blaine spells it slow and languid. “What is that?”

 

“Are you serious?”

 

“Should I know that?”

 

“Aren’t you gay?”

 

“No, Sam, I’m not gay.”

 

“Look it up right now on Urban Dictionary.”

 

“Just tell me.”

 

“No, ‘cause I wanna see the look on your face when you read it.”

 

“Won’t I just have that same look when you tell me?”

 

Sam becomes distracted by the sudden spark in Blaine’s eyes; the quirk of Blaine’s smile, curious, a little devious, and this is the first time he’s been able to joke flirty-Blaine back out into existence. Sam considers this progress.

 

Still later on, Blaine is yawning; starting to lose the warm glow of drunk happiness, staring off into space as Sam leaves him to get ready for bed himself. Every minute that Blaine isn’t talking to Sam, which unfortunately is most of the day, he’s thinking about what happened. How that night that things ended, he’d spent his whole day booking a wedding venue, beating a dead horse when he’d known that Kurt hadn’t been in it, not in a while.

 

He was so in denial that it kills him; literally, his humiliation makes him feel like dying. Whenever he lies alone on Sam’s couch, his thoughts spiral: _I_ _can’t keep going to_ _NYADA. I can’t keep up with the coursework. My parents are going into debt over this and I haven’t been able to focus on anything. E_ _verywhere I go reminds me of him. Am I coward? For wanting to run as far from this place as possible?_

 

“You good, dude?” Sam’s just out of the shower, towel clad, dimming the lights in the room. “You have that, like, pinchy existential crisis look on your face. Either that or you’re backed up. You did eat a lot of cronuts.”

 

“I’m fine.” Blaine doesn’t know why he says it; Sam knows he isn’t fine. “It’s just—sometimes the couch, like, gives me a crick in my back. I think I might be getting sore because of it.”

 

“You know you can sleep on the bed. We can trade, I’ll take the couch. You’re not putting me out. I want you to feel comfortable.”

 

So they do. Blaine has to admit, as he slips between the white down comforters, that their feel and the view of the night-lit cityscape that Sam’s windows provide, make him more at home than he’s felt since he left the loft. Still, just like every night since his heart broke, Blaine cries softly against the pillow. Wonders if maybe he should see a therapist. If he can even bring himself to tell his parents that he needs the extra money to see a therapist. That he’s broken. 

 

He doesn’t want to hear what he knows they’ll tell him: _You should’ve thought first. You_ _ar_ _en’t ready for marriage. You dive head first into shallow water for love._

 

 

 

 

 

Sam doesn’t think he could’ve picked a worse time to realize that his feelings for Blaine are moving beyond friendship. That maybe, they always have been. Because objectively “thinking he’s adorable” and wanting to spend time with him because they _are_ friends has nothing to do with the dreams he’s been having. 

 

Friends don’t dream about making love to their friends, cradling their hips, dicking them down good and slow into the mattress. Friends don't want to make their friends' misery go this way. All he knows it that he wakes up on his couch to the sight of Blaine sleeping in his bed, and he's hard, trying to blame it on the fact that it's just that he hasn't seen Blaine in a while, that he misses Mercedes, that his unconscious mind is just trying to figure out where his best friend fits, that's all.

 

But he's not that dumb, at least, not about himself.

 

It hasn’t been easy, letting this deviant aspect of his psyche crop up onto the surface of his person. He’s been struggling with the way he feels about boys and men since he was fifteen, if he's being honest. Running right from the doors of the all-boys boarding school in Montana and right into the Glee club at McKinley, where Kurt could read him like an open book and Finn was brave and goofy and handsome in a way that made his skin burn, some nights when he thought about it. From then on, there was no escape. The Hudmel brothers were his ideal, what he wanted in a partner and what he wanted in brothers and it was all so confusing and familial; he still hasn't survived it, if he's being honest.

 

One night, Kurt and Finn's senior year, Sam was up doing homework in the dining room. Finn and Burt and Carole were upstairs, and Blaine was over to visit Kurt, and they sat cozy in the next room over, watching TV on the couch. Sam had his headphones on, but he was watching them through the open doorway, where he had a profile view of their bodies on the couch; watching how Blaine's hands moved underneath the blanket, probably running over Kurt's thighs, watching Kurt's little sighs of relief when Blaine's hand disappeared from Sam's view, into shadows. They weren't messing around, just touching each other over clothes, Sam knew that. But it was captivating, watching them react to each other without really reacting: eyes on the TV but hands on each other, comfortable, in love, blue glow awash on their faces.

 

He didn't get it before that night, that these two boys really were just like any other two people in love. The gay thing, it wasn't avant garde, it wasn't different, and it wasn't not okay. It was comfort. It was two people at the end of a long day wanting nothing more than to massage each other gently. To say with the open curves of their bodies, "I'm here. You're safe now."

 

It was after that night that Sam knew it was ineviatable; stay this close to Kurt and Blaine, and their love, and he might deign to want it for himself. That thought terrified him then, and it terrifies him now, but the older Sam gets, the more time he spends in New York, and the more models he meets, male and female alike, the more he can’t stop seeing beauty as just beauty. The more he can’t help but know in the pit of his gut that erotic dancing, and modeling, has always been about more than an obsession with health. It’s been about the male body; the hard, cut figure that he’s burned to emulate, the firm shoulders and tight waist. But Sam Evans wants more than to emulate; he wants to show appreciation, wants proximity, wants sweat and pumped muscles and wants burn, wants his tongue along someone’s abs.

 

And maybe when he was sharing Kurt’s bathroom, or practically living on top of Blaine in the brownstone, there hadn’t been enough of a shock to Sam’s system for him to realize what he wanted concretely. Sometimes feelings can be suppressed or repressed until something big enough jostles them loose. Now they're loose.

  

It's been shocking for Blaine to lose Kurt, and orbit no one, and deal with the rawness and vulnerability of starting over. Sam’s also had to go it alone for the first real time ever, without Mercedes, without Brittany, without any of the female obsessions, warm and comforting, he’s previously chased. But loving Blaine is comfort, too. Slow burn in this way that’s snuck up on him, has quietly grown during schooltime lunches, and tacky Glee rehearsals, and Xbox rounds until five in the morning, and red eye flights to New York, asleep on each other's shoulders.

 

The circumstances now are not ideal; for all that Sam’s sure that his company is helping his best friend along through a solo year at NYADA, Sam knows he can’t make Blaine go to class, or stop Blaine from promising that he’s keeping on top of his work when Sam knows he isn’t. Sam sometimes comes back to find Blaine in the same place left him all day, and as someone who’s been there, he knows what that means. He doesn’t want to add any more pressure to Blaine’s survival mode.

 

And so Sam thinks, for a blind, lustful moment, that maybe he can reciprocate with someone else, for the time being. Maybe that someone can be Madsklen Finite, a Scandinavian model, 21, who he happens to catch a photoshoot alongside that weekend, what luck. 

 

Sam has seen Madsklen around before; apparently, Madsklen has also seen him. In his thick accent, after the shoot, Madsklen’s inviting Sam to go dancing at the cage-dancing gay club where he’s pretty sure Rachel had her Opening Night after party. That night, he was in love with his friends and his life, and being in the building now, even though it’s with a near stranger, has him feeling open and nostalgic in a way that he thinks makes him ready to take the plunge:

 

Madsklen offers to buy him a drink. Sam declines, because he wants to be sure that what he’s feeling right now, what he’s seeing, the way Madsklen’s youthful body moves beneath his white shirt in the low, sinful-red lights, is actually turning him on. Like hell it is. Sam’s always been a hell of a dancer, so he doesn’t shy, doesn’t care where he is, this isn’t Lima; he pulls Madsklen in by his belt loops, grinds against him and feels his hard body.

 

Madsklen is clearly turned on; Sam’s heart is racing, knowing that the feeling of his hands on hard hips, the feeling of Madsklen’s length rutting against his thigh, somehow, it does something for him now; it may not have before, but that’s the beautiful thing about life, growing older. Sometimes change’ll do you good. This is a change he wants to run with. For good.

 

He’s only at the club for an hour before he realizes this isn’t the man he wants to take home tonight. He knows he wants to be with Blaine; remembers being here with him, Kurt and everyone on Opening Night. Remembers always looking to Blaine first; that’s how you always know, Sam thinks, that they’re the one, when they’re the first person you look to when you’re having fun, the first person you want to tell about a grand epiphany.

 

When Sam gets in that night, Blaine’s almost-asleep on the couch, but not quite. He opens one eye, bundled up under a blanket in one of Sam’s Avengers t-shirts and a pair of cotton sweatpants that are way too small for him. Sam’s body still rushes with energy. But he sobers, sensing that Blaine hasn’t had a day himself. He can wait.

 

“Hey,” Blaine says. “You have fun?”

 

“Oh, yeah. One could say—life-changing. But enough about me. What are you doing back on the couch?”

 

Blaine shrugs, smiles, self-deprecating. “I spent my whole day here. Figured I might as well end it here too.” 

 

“Fuck that noise,” Sam says gently, smiling back. “Get your ass into the comfortable bed. C’mon.”

 

Blaine does so, as Sam cuts off the lights, strips into his underwear; Sam realizes, there in the moonlight, that Blaine is staring at him.

 

“You can sleep here too,” Blaine says. “If you want.”

 

Sam does. It's like every dream he's had, except he wouldn't dream of trying anything now. Blaine turns onto his side, his back towards Sam, and Sam knows not to inch forward, not to hold Blaine to comfort him, though he wants to so badly, with everything in him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s nearly summer, only three weeks left until the end of the NYADA semester, and Blaine’s failing six out of eight of his classes. He just can’t care.

  

Why should he care, when failing isn’t the end of the world? He and Kurt still haven’t spoken a word, but Kurt still wears the ring, looks to Blaine in silence often, in class or the halls. Kurt looks distant and wondering. Blaine is too numb, sometimes too angry, to look back. Why should he harrow over the past, and ask why Kurt hasn’t taken it off, and relive the night that Kurt ran from him, if none of that is going to change the future?

 

What will his future be, once he flunks?

 

He doesn’t want to think about that today. Instead, he wants only to think about the current game of Overwatch he’s playing, how deep he is in this world, and how at around six o’ clock, Sam will be back. _Sam probably knows I’m flunking_ , he thinks; he hasn’t said it, but Sam’s smarter than his usual credit. He knows Sam won’t judge him because of it, or, okay, maybe he will, and maybe he does deserve to be judged for throwing tens of thousands of dollars of tuition down the drain because depression. But at least he’s showering every day now.

 

At least there are some things to look forward to every day, like what Sam will concoct for dinner, which Blaine won’t even be able to keep down, but still. Or what time the sun will set, glorious and golden over the cityscape through the window.

 

Or what time, finally, Blaine will crawl into Sam's bed. Blaine wants, no needs, simplicity; needs knowing that just being alive, just breathing in and out, is enough for him to warrant a place in this world.

 

Sam bounds in at six sharp with the news that he’s booked his first runway show with a big designer. His agent says that if his walk with Diesel bodes well, he could be contracted again for NY Fashion Week. They may even include him in their shoot for their next Vogue ad, and that could reach a circulation of 100,000+.

 

“Can you imagine?” Sam says, “I’m not just gonna be, like, this all-American, little-league, Macaulay-Culkin-before-the-drugs motherfucker. I’m gonna be, like, a couture motherfucker, in Europe. I used to joke about traveling to Paris or Milan, but now I think I might _actually_ be traveling to Paris or Milan.”

 

“This is absolutely the coolest thing ever! Didn’t I tell you you’d make it if you stayed?”

 

Sam hugs him suddenly, tight and warm, and Blaine feels something coarse through him, all over his body, at the touch. It’s been so long since he’s let himself really be touched; for the last two months he's been terrified at the idea of ever letting anyone in again. But Sam is different, isn't he? There would be no letting-in, because Sam's already there.

 

"Thank you," Sam says. He squeezes. "Thank you so much, Blaine. For believing in me when no one else did."

 

Sometimes, Blaine thinks that there's another life; one where he and Sam were growing old together. In another life, Kurt still turned Blaine down, but Blaine let his mistake happen, didn’t hold onto to the impossible. Sam was holding him like this now because they were lovers, because after Blaine fucked up with Kurt he swore that he'd never do it again to someone else, and Sam was there to make sure that it happened.

 

In that life, Sam was in love with him back, and they took the world by storm.

 

That life is not this life, but still, Blaine feels a sting of nostalgia for it. Like he was that version of himself at one point in time, and right now, the two are diverging. Like when Sam pulls back and grins at him now, his heart aches for more of Sam again.

 

“We should celebrate,” Sam says then, and maybe he’s smiling wider than usual, with that flirt-smile he only used to intentionally use on Mercedes, or maybe Blaine is just making that up.

 

“Yeah, definitely!" Blaine's skin pricks with heat regardless. "What’d you have in mind?”

 

“I’m not really feeling like a crowd or like, one of those crazy gay clubs, as much I’m starting to like those crazy gay clubs. I just mean we should celebrate ourselves, like, at home tonight. I’m gonna open that big ass bottle of whiskey,” he whips off his shirt, and Blaine doesn’t know if he’ll ever stop thrilling at the sight of Sam whipping off clothing; even at the height of his devotion to Kurt, it still stirred him, “and you are gonna stop being a nerd and living online, and we’re gonna dance.”

 

“Oh, are we?”

 

Sam grabs the remote and clicks it towards his stereo, which starts playing "[Bartier Cardi.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXP6vliZIHI)"

 

“Oh, God," Blaine laughs.

 

Sam grins and pours two double shots, handing one to Blaine, and then gets one of his shitty dining room chairs to set up in the middle of the room.

 

"Sit."

 

Blaine sits.

 

"Am I finally going to experience the flavor they call White Chocolate?" He's teasing, trying to sound cool and nonchalant and sarcastic.

 

Sam laughs. "It's a shame I've never danced with you before. I've been holding out."

 

“Don’t.”

 

“Okay.”

  

They take their shots in unison. Sam is loose, comfortable, starts twisting his hips with such control to the loud base, the slick voice of the rapper. He starts slow, not touching Blaine, hovering over the chair, then graduates to straddling Blaine, slowing his body rolls to an insane degree. Blaine can't breathe. He used to imagine this before, imagine Sam's hard abs and those hip bones within his reach, all that clear, fine skin, and Sam's lips, God, Sam's lips.

 

Sam gets on his knees, slides his hands up Blaine's thighs. The look on Blaine's face is stunned, the good kind, and Sam feels courageous enough to really go for this; brings his lips to the growing tent in Blaine's pants, mouths over the fabric just so, barely there, making the motions of someone giving head.

 

"Oh my God, Sam."

 

The song ends too soon. 

 

Sam's face is slightly flushed as he kneels back onto his ankles, bows slightly. “And that’s why they called me DSL.”

 

“DSL. You still haven’t told me what that means. All I found when I Googled it was Digital Subscriber Line.”

 

Sam chuckles, rolls his eyes. “Dick sucking lips.”

 

“Oh. Yikes!”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“They are nice, though.”

 

Sam comes back forward, puts his hands back on Blaine’s thighs. He feels what Blaine did moments ago, like there's a part of himself that has always been with Blaine, has always known that this is safe.

 

“I could kiss you with‘m right now.”

 

“God.” Blaine wants him so bad, right now. “You don’t mean that.”

 

“I don’t?”

 

“No! You’re straight.”

 

“I don’t know, I’m not, like, _that_ straight.”

 

“Okay, are you hearing yourself? Or is the androgyny trend going on in fashion right now making you all worldly and exploratory?”

 

“I don’t know! Maybe it’s just ‘cause I’m getting older, and being on all these photoshoots, there are a lot of pretty fucking men, the kind that would’ve never stepped foot in a place like Kentucky or Ohio.”

 

“Oh, yeah?” Blaine can’t stop reveling in the fact that Sam’s hands are still on his thighs. “Like who?”

 

“The other night. Me and this guy I’ve been on shoots with, he’s like, Scandinavian or something, real cut, we danced together, and he was like—rock hard beneath his pants, and I—I was feeling it. I wasn’t totally down to fuck him, but it just made me realize, like, beautiful people are beautiful people. I’m never gonna be this young again or be around people who look this again, so why fight what I’m feeling in the moment?”

 

Blaine knows he must look shocked. He’s practically drooling imagining Sam making out on the dance floor with another model.

 

“I know,” Sam says, “you think I’m messing with you, but I’m telling you, I’m not that straight. Not right now.”

 

Blaine lets his eyes roam Sam's body one more time, suddenly overcome with that deja vu from earlier, like he and Sam have done this a million times over in another world. Can do so now.

 

“So, “ Sam says. “Will you let me kiss you?”

 

“God, yes.”

 

Blaine would be lying if he said he hadn’t imagined this: finally, his hands roaming down Sam’s picturesque body, those abs, that tight waist. It doesn’t take long for their making out to escalate, their roaming kissing in the living room turning into Sam picking Blaine up, letting him straddle him around his waist. Stumbling them over to the bed, throwing Blaine down onto the comforter, shoving Blaine's shirt over his shoulders. Kissing his way up and down Blaine's chest, which he used to imagine had less hair, but fuck it, Blaine's perfect just the way he is, compact and loveable and good.

 

Blaine is paralyzed by how in control Sam is, how much he wants. Sam's undoing Blaine’s belt on his pants, re-doing that move from before but it's something else entirely seeing it in action while he's wearing no pants.

 

“Sam,” he manages, as the addressee is staring at him like he's never wanted anything more. "Are you sure?"

 

"Yes. Please."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam lies on his back and Blaine curls up beside him, head on his chest; Sam looks down at Blaine's eyelashes splayed across his cheeks and god, he hopes he hasn't fucked this up. Making love to Blaine was everything he's ever wanted, but a part of him feels he may have fucked this up.

 

"Blaine?" Sam can feel him blinking, eyelashes tickling the skin of his chest. "I know you're still, like, upset about Kurt, and I don't want you to feel like I'm overstepping, and I guess I just wanna know if that--was really okay."

 

Blaine shifts to look up at him, smiles soft. He looks sleepy, and for the first time in a long time, at peace.

 

“No, no," he says. "Thank you. I needed this." He kisses Sam's chest. "I love you.”

 

Blaine says it simply, the way he always does. But tonight, Sam takes to it heart, it hits him deep.

 

“I love you too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Blaine wakes up the next morning, Sam is gone. Blaine almost can't believe that last night was real, but it was. Here he is, still naked. When he sits up, his head aches from the shots, and he realizes it's 9 a.m. and his Acting For the Camera class started two hours ago.

 

It hasn't been okay for him to leave the house in days. He can't, hasn't wanted to, won't let himself. Because as much Blaine wants to pretend that he's okay with Kurt still orbiting him, still wearing that ring, still rejecting him, he's not. Only in Sam's room can he protect himself from himself, from the inevitable. 

 

He tries to keep the lid on what he can feel is an emotional breakdown, by sipping on a little bit of liquor and playing Xbox until Sam comes home. Sam comes in that night and tells Blaine that he's going out to a new band's opening night at a club with Santana’s ex girlfriend, Dani. They’d always gotten along, and she’d just gotten back from South America, where she treated herself to a vacation post-breakup. He misses her.

 

“You wanna come with?” Sam says. “I don’t think Kurt’s going. Actually, you know what, he’s probably going. If he is, we can pretend we don’t see him, or whatever. If that’s what you want. Solidarity."

 

“No, no." The thought of Kurt knowing that he and Sam were intimate, all of a sudden, makes him feel like he might be sick. How could he do that with someone Kurt knows? And not just knows, but used to live with? Who Kurt loves, too? "You go and have a good time. I have, like, a final to study for, anyway.”

 

“You sure?”

 

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll just.”

 

Sam pauses for a moment, licks his lips, then looks down at the floor, sighs. Blaine wants to reassure him, that it wasn't last night, that he's fine, that he's fine, but he can't lie anymore. He loves Sam, he does, but sex was not going to change anything about Blaine's disposition.

 

The only thing that will change Blaine is himself.

 

When Sam leaves, Blaine shuts off the television and dims the light. He has no final to study for, at least, not any one that he's remotely prepared to take. It's over.

 

He finally feels the emotion bubble up in him, ugly, tearful, ungracious. He lies on his back in Sam's bed, crying for what feels like hours, thinking about everything that's happened and how badly he just wants to go home to Ada, admit defeat.

 

At midnight, then, he gets a notification on his phone that says “GET MARRIED!!!” because this was the day that they picked.

 

This sends him into a spiral. Blaine starts moving all his stuff, dragging bags full of clothes to the front door, picking up socks and notebooks and things scattered around the floor, mixed up with Sam's.

 

 He calls his mother, who he knows will scold him, but out of love.

 

 _"We have been waiting for your call,"_ she says.  _"NYADA sent us a letter letting us know that you're failing, that you lost your scholarship. We can talk about it when you come home.You aren't still getting married, on top of all this, are you?"_

 

"No, Mom. I'm not."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Sam arrives at the venue for the show and meets Dani in the lobby, fists bumps her and then holds her close. When they walk in, Dani tells him that Elliott is the one who knows the frontman of the band, he invited her here and "yeah, he's bringing Kurt." In fact, Elliott and Kurt are already here; Dani leads Sam into the crowded club as Elliott spots them and waves them over to his crescent-shaped booth, grinning wide.

 

Beneath Elliott's arm, smiling warmly as he sips on the straw of a cocktail, is Kurt.

 

"Hey, Sam!" Elliott greets. "So good to see you."

 

"You too, man."

 

Kurt's expression somewhat falters when he sees Sam. "Hey."

 

"Hey."

 

As the four them sit at a booth with their drinks, watching the band’s set, Kurt sits so close to Elliott, and they whisper to each other, laugh so much, that Sam doesn’t know why he didn’t know that they were a thing until now. Of course they’re a thing. Elliott is awesome. So is Kurt.

 

But it hurts. Sam and Kurt avoid each other’s eyes, sitting on opposite sides with Dani and Elliott between them, and the tension, and the feeling like he should say something, is so much that Sam sorely feels like he still needs another drink, after the third. He wanders to the bar along the back wall as the band is transitioning between songs. He yells his order to the very busy bartender, and not long afterward, he finds that Kurt has followed him.

 

“So,” Kurt says, giving a hesitant smile. His body language says that he’s trying to act like this is strictly casual, them catching up, and maybe it should be. But it isn’t. “How’s Blaine?”

 

Sam hesitates. Images from last night immediately flood his mind; Blaine in ecstasy, Blaine’s dick in his mouth, the way he looked curled up naked, in the after. The way Blaine looked tonight before Sam left, like he was close to breaking. The next thing that comes out of Sam’s mouth is a defense because knows he's losing Blaine.

 

That Blaine was never his.

 

“He says he’s been going to class, but honestly, I don’t think he’s left the house in over a week," Sam says. "I can’t get him to eat much anymore, not even those cronut things he used to suck down like a python swallowing a pregnant rat. He’s falling apart. Over you. And I’m not saying it’s your fault, I know relationships go both ways and all that, but Blaine, he’s more sensitive than the rest of us. You’re not exactly being gentle. Why are you still wearing his ring? He talks about that once a day. At least.”

 

Kurt’s smile drops off his face.

 

“You know what? You may know what it’s like to be Blaine’s best friend, but you have no idea what it’s like to be in love with him for years. To be so enamored and consumed with his life, and his body, and his soul, that you can’t untangle yourself, back away and see the bigger picture. I know I was making him miserable. _We_ were making each other miserable, and he was never gonna realize that unless I forced him to wake up and see it. Gentle’s all fine and good until the person that you love contorts themselves into someone they hate being for you. You know what that’s like, with Mercedes, don’t you?”

 

This cuts Sam deep. He knows Kurt's right. Kurt's always known about him.

 

“And I’m still wearing the ring because I can’t take it off," Kurt says. "I know that it’s over. Still. I can’t.”

 

Sam is suddenly taken back to that night he watched them, how he felt. Jealous, of their love. At first, he was jealous of Blaine. He thought covering up his minor crush on Kurt would be easy if he befriended the guy’s boyfriend. Look where that got him.

 

The sharp prettiness of Kurt’s face, here in the low, blue light, is so intimidating. Always has been. Those angles in his jaw and bone structure, and the pink pout of his lips, and the way he carries himself, like he knows more than everyone else does about everything. Sam wishes he didn't have to hold back.

 

“You and me," he says now, making it a point to keep his eyes on Kurt's face, no matter how much it stirs him, "we’re a lot alike. We’ve both had to fight like dogs to get what we want. We know the world is, like, actually really scary, and full people who wanna beat you down, and people like Blaine and Mercedes, they choose not to see that, and that’s a beautiful thing, you know? But sometimes you gotta stop smelling the roses and realize all flowers shrivel up and die, no matter how long and hard you try and take care of ‘m.”

 

Oh, is Sam sweating hard after admitting that. Kurt just stares, listening, his head tilted.

 

“I’m sorry, Kurt," Sam keeps going. "I have been siding with Blaine more than I should, and I guess that’s ‘cause I haven’t talked to you, like, really talked to you in a long time.”

 

“I know.”

 

Suddenly, Sam understands why this is: Kurt was like his brother once upon a time, but now the two of them stand together a broken family. Because Finn is gone.

 

Finn, the unifying force between them, Finn, who forced them all to eat dinner together every night even when they were fighting over Glee club. Finn, who Sam can’t think about anymore, not because he doesn’t want to, but because it hurts too much. Kurt must be hurting the same way. Only worse, because Finn and Kurt had a bond that surpassed understanding.

 

What years of great loss these have been for Kurt, haven't they? Sam suddenly wants to hug him. He doesn’t.

 

“No, you—you did the right thing,” he says, becoming more nervous the more Kurt stays silent. “With Blaine. You’re a good guy, Kurt, even if some of our friends may villain-ate you for calling off the wedding. You’d never have it out for him. You did it because you love him and you want him to be himself again. One day, he’ll get that.”

 

Kurt hesitates, then: “Can I ask you something? Have you and Blaine ever…?”

 

 _Shit,_ Sam thinks. _Did that adorable fuck leave me a hickey? No, even if he did, why would Kurt think it was from him?_

 

“I don’t know,” Sam says. He swallows the rest of his drink, the burn of the alcohol going straight to his head. He stares down at the slippery ice in the cup, swirling it around. “He’s been so caught up in you and I’ve been so caught up in—whatever girl my pants want me to get into at any given time—that we've never had a chance to really. I don't know.”

 

He makes eye contact with Kurt again, and to his surprise, Kurt hasn't flinched at all at what he’s said. He’s not mad or surprised. He's just patient, listening.

 

“I think maybe we could have been together,” Sam says, “in another universe.” His heart is beating really, really hard right now. “What, could you, like. Tell, with me and him, or something?”

 

“For a while, when you were living on our couch," Kurt says now, "I was a _little_ bit jealous of how weirdly in sync you two were. It made me realize how long he and I had been living apart, when meanwhile, you and he had been spending all that time together. It was just so much easier for you and him, when you got to New York, to keep up your rapport as friends. At the beginning, it was like that with Blaine and I, but when we got engaged, things got so serious, so fast. Sometimes I wanted to be you. The guy that Blaine saw in his life as low-stakes and low-pressure. And I’m embarrassed to admit that when I _kinda_ started going manorexic last year? It may have been slightly fueled by my internal, ongoing competition with your physique. Blaine never would’ve said it aloud, he was so deeply ashamed, but I caught his eye many a time wandering ‘bro-platonically’ down your ‘Treasure Trailz.’”

 

Sam laughs, unabashed, and Kurt laughs too.

 

“He’s something else, that guy, huh?” Sam says.

 

Kurt nods. “He is.”

 

Sam taps the rim of his glass to Kurt’s, and wishes he could hug him, so he does. Kurt hugs back, intently.

 

“Your next one’s on me.” Sam buys Kurt another drink. They toast as the band starts up another cover.

 

“This song reminds of me Finn,” Kurt says as they head back to the table.

 

“Me too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Sam gets back late that night, Blaine is standing in the living room fully dressed, in jeans and a nice jacket. Sam hasn't seen him not in sweatpants for a while. He's on the phone. His nose is red, and he's pacing in front of a pile of his things, some neatly folded, some haphazard.

 

"Yeah, Mom. Sam is here, so. I should go. I love you too."

 

Sam sighs, feels something in his chest crack open. Pain.

 

"Look," Sam says, "if you really feel that strongly about what we did, we can talk, we--it doesn't have to be weird, I can handle the rejection--"

 

"Stop." Blaine walks up to him, hugs him for a moment, then pulls back. "It's not you. You know it's not you. It's me. Sometimes--" he sighs, trying to keep his voice from breaking. "Sometimes things can be suppressed, or repressed, until something big enough jostles them loose. I haven't been okay, and I think it took us--it was beautiful,  _you_ are beautiful, and I'm grateful, you know, that I have you and that you made me feel safe. It's just that I'm not okay about Kurt. I'm really not. And I couldn't access that, couldn't know that until I stopped being scared of living and tried it again."

 

Sam nods, his eyes stinging. "I get it. You can’t keep living like this. I think you need to go home."

 

Blaine gestures to his stuff on the floor. "My mom bought me a ticket for tonight. Back to Ohio."

 

They hug again.

 

"I'm sorry that this happened," Sam says. "You and Kurt and everything. I just wish I could fix it."

 

Blaine shakes his head. "Don't worry about us. You're the most selfless person I know, you would do anything to make the people you know feel loved. But it's your life, Sam. Make it about you from now on."

 

And so, Sam stays in New York alone. He travels the world, his face becoming known. He buys himself a new place, and by that fall, he and Kurt have worked their way back up to a friendship that isn't about Blaine, about anything else but just them. He invites Kurt and Elliott over and Elliott plays his songs for them while Kurt and Sam reminisce about Finn, cry laugh about it all together.

 

Blaine calls him every couple of days. Says he's writing music again, working out, staying out of the house, finding himself again. Sam is glad.


End file.
